1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to web documents.
2. Related Art
"Web documents" are hypertext documents, including information and capable of including hypertext pointers to other web documents. Other web documents can be located on the same computer or on another computer in a network of computers, the largest such network of which is commonly known as the "internet" (but such networks may be independent networks or may be part of a private network commonly known as an "intranet"). The information in web documents can include text, graphical elements, program applets, and other information formats.
One problem which has arisen in the art is that servers of web documents desire to be able to present information to web clients, without those web clients being able to copy that information and retain it permanently. This problem is particularly acute for graphical information, which must be transmitted to the web client display, but once transmitted can be retained and even edited by the web client using graphical editing tools.
Known web documents sometimes include reduced-size ("thumbnail") graphical elements, which substitute for full size graphical elements and allow the user of the web client to have an idea of the nature of the full size graphical element. Payment can be required before the user of the web client is given access to the full size graphical element.
While this method has some value in preventing wholesale copying of graphical elements and other information from web documents, it suffers from several drawbacks. First, the web client can copy the information from the thumbnail graphical element, and the user of that web client can use graphical editing tools to enhance the quality of the thumbnail graphical element. Second, once the user has paid for the full size graphical element, there is nothing (other than possible legal restrictions) preventing the user from copying and redistributing that full size graphical element.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a method and system for presenting graphical elements and other information in web documents, without allowing web clients unrestricted ability to copy and redistribute that information. This advantage is achieved in an embodiment of the invention in which each graphical element in a web document is protected by a program applet, which can display the graphical element or other information for a limited time.